Tuesday, November 17, 1998 Published at 12:24 GMTUKRoad opening bypasses protestWorkmen, barely discernible in the darkness, unveil signs above the new bypassThe controversial Newbury bypass has opened with minimal ceremony, in an attempt to avoid a follow-up to the protest campaign which overshadowed its construction.

The official opening ceremony was kept secret until early on Tuesday morning - three years after plans for the road were first announced.

It took two hours to remove the cones and barriers to allow access to the road, before a lone driver in a Volkswagen was the first to be waved onto the bypass by police.

This motorist was soon followed by the lorry drivers, who will be the main beneficiaries of the route which is part of an arterial link between the Midlands and the south coast.

Huge protests

Work on the 8.5-mile (13.5km) bypass provoked the biggest anti-roads protest ever staged in Britain.

Some 29 camps were set up by campaigners around the site, who built treehouses
and dug tunnels in an effort to halt the operation.

Since January 1996 thousands of trees have been uprooted and dozens of anti-road campaigners arrested during construction of the £74m road.

Protest was 'enormous success'

More than 35 protest camps had to be cleared in 1996

Our environment correspondent, Margaret Gilmore, says that while the protesters may have lost a battle in Newbury, they have won a war.

New government research has found that the costs of schemes like the Newbury bypass outweigh the benefits, and transport policy has shifted away from such projects.

Campaigners believe that even though they failed to stop the bypass being built their
actions galvanised public opinion against further road building around the
country.

Alasdair Stark, of Newbury Friends of the Earth, said: "The protest as a whole
was an enormous success and the warmest thing anyone can take from the
destruction here was that the Salisbury bypass was stopped on environmental
grounds."

Tony Juniper, also of FoE, said Newbury represented "a turning point in transport policies thinking".

Ex-minister defends road

Stephen Norris, who was transport minister in the Conservative government at the time of the protests, said he believed the bypass was "an appropriate response to the particular problems that Newbury faces".

He said this view reflected that of the present government.

"Road building shouldn't be the first reponse to congestion, but it will be on occasion a necessary part of the armoury any government needs when dealing with such a crucial economic and environmental issue," he said.

Businessman Adrian Foster-Fletcher described the road as a "dinosaur", saying it would bring no benefit to the town.

He said: "We have got an urban motorway on our doorstep and Newbury is now up
for grabs as the next Slough. The Thames Valley is under a lot of development
pressure and Newbury is the next obvious place to develop."

He also pointed out that traffic from Thatcham and Basingstoke will still pass through central Newbury.